Vehicles, such as automobiles, may be equipped with an instrument panel. The instrument panel may provide the operator with useful information for operating and driving the vehicle. The instrument panel may indicate the speed of the vehicle, the revolutions-per-minute (RPM) of the vehicle's engine, a present state of the lighting, a present state of the windshield wipers, for example. The instrument panel may employ mechanical gauges, digital displays, or a combination thereof to convey information about the status of the vehicle.
Instrument panels may be embedded or placed in the dashboard of the vehicle. This ensures that the instrument panel is in a line of sight for the vehicle's driver. Thus, the vehicle's driver may view the road while safely glancing at the instrument panel to obtain useful information for aiding in the operation of the vehicle. The instrument panel's placement is static, and thus fixed in a specific location.
The gauges of the instrument panel may be implemented with mechanical pointers, or digital displays, or combinations of both. A mechanical pointer is anchored at a pivot point, and driven by a motor (for example a stepper motor) in a 360 degree fashion. Based on the current employed to drive the motor, or control signals, the motor may move the mechanical pointer in a clockwise or counter-clockwise fashion. The mechanical pointer is conventionally longer in the direction in which the mechanical pointer is pointing at.
The gauges in which a mechanical pointer may be implemented with are numerous. In one common implementation, the mechanical pointer is implemented with a fuel gauge, which essentially indicates the status of a fuel tank.
FIG. 1(a) illustrates an example mechanical gauge 100 according to a conventional implementation.
The mechanical gauge 100 has a visible portion 110 and a non-visible portion 120. The visible portion 110 is situated with indicia 150 indicating the various states of available fuel. A pointer 160 rotates around a pivot 161. The pointer 160 is driven by a motor 130 that receives a reading of the available fuel from the vehicle, for example, by the fuel sensor 140. The pointer 160 is driven to the corresponding indicia 150 point to reflect the current status of available fuel.
In recent times, other techniques for indicating a vehicular status have also been implemented. FIG. 1(b) illustrates an example of a digital gauge 170 according to a conventional implementation.
Digital gauge 170 may be any sort of implementable visual system installed in a vehicle instrument cluster. For example, the digital gauge 170 may be implemented via a TFT, LCD, LED, or any other display technology known to one of ordinary skill in the art.
The digital gauge 170 includes a shaded portion 180 and a non-shaded portion 190. These portions change as the fuel sensor 140 provides an updated reading associated with the available fuel. As described with the mechanical gauge 100, indicia 150 is provided as well. The indicia serve a similar function of providing an indication of the available amount of fuel.